Sunday Afternoon Quarterback: The BCS Championship Game from Hell

After a year of upsets and wild finishes, there’s no telling how the BCS championship race will play out.

From Appalachian State beating Michigan to Stanford beating USC to the Miracle in Mississippi between Trinity (TX) University and Millsaps College (MS) —this has been the most unpredictable season in my (albeit short) lifetime.

As it stands, even the best analysts have about as good of a track record as you or I do—and I'm horrible at making predictions.

In that spirit, I present to you a scenario that no one else will predict—much less desire.

Close your eyes for a minute and imagine that THIS is the finale of your DIVISION ONE FOOTBALL college football season...

1. Ohio State gets beaten handily by the Michigan Wolverines.

The late-season loss sends Ohio State spiraling out of the National Championship picture, but the lack of one-loss teams helps OSU make a BCS bowl as an at-large invite.

Two weeks later, Clemson head coach Tommy Bowden finally decides to give the ball to James Davis and C.J. Spiller, and the Tigers upset BC in Death Valley.

3. LSU wins close battles against Alabama and Arkansas en route to the SEC Championship Game against the Georgia Bulldogs. The Tigers lose.

Though LSU is heavily favored, Les Miles’s decisions to fake every punt and kick prove to be costly. Quarterback Matt Flynn doesn’t help the cause by throwing wobbly, inaccurate passes away from his array of All-American wide receivers.

The game is a coming-out party for sophomore QB Matthew Stafford and freshman RB Knowshon Moreno. Ever since they stopped partying and picked up the playbook, the Bulldogs have gone undefeated.

With at least two losses for every team in the conference, the SEC gets shut out of the national title game.

4. Fresh off an impressive win over USC, the Oregon Ducks underestimate the Arizona State Sun Devils—who feature a guy named “Rudy” at quarterback.

The ASU defense finds a way to stop the spread offense, and the Sun Devils come out of Autzen Stadium with a close victory.

6. Hawaii goes undefeated...until they play a competent opponent and get obliterated by Boise State.

Boise running back Ian Johnson makes his futile push for the Heisman Trophy with 450 yards and five touchdowns. Colt Brennan cries. It’s a good day for the BCS.

7. UConn loses their last four games and gets an invitation to the Meineke Car Care Bowl.

UConn rejects this invitation and instead chooses the PapaJohns.com Bowl, because even the Huskies have their standards.

8. The Oklahoma Sooners breeze through Texas A&M, Baylor, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma State. With the BCS on their mind, the Sooners travel to the Big 12 Championship Game in San Antonio to face—surprise—the Kansas Jayhawks.

With under a minute left in a tie game, Kansas star cornerback Aqib Talib picks off a Bradford pass and takes it deep into Oklahoma territory. As time expires, Kansas kicker Scott Webb splits the uprights for a Colorado-esque upset.

9. To get to the Big 12 Championship game in the first place, Kansas blew out Oklahoma State and Iowa State and had close comeback victories at home against Nebraska and Missouri.

With the upset win against Oklahoma, the undefeated Kansas Jayhawks leapfrog a one-loss West Virginia team to play for the BCS National Championship game in New Orleans.

Who do they play?

The undefeated, undisputed No. 1 team in the land...the Arizona State Sun Devils, who scored upset wins against Oregon and USC behind Heisman-winning QB Rudy Carpenter.

Carpenter attributes the rise of the program to the departure of cancerous QB Sam Keller—who's now happily wreaking havoc upon the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

10. Fans all around the country protest the improbable turn of events. People denounce the BCS and call for NCAA chief Myles Brand to be fired. Cars are overturned over and couches are burned. The SEC threatens to secede.

Reesing and running backs Brandon McAnderson and Jake Sharp keep Kansas in the title game, but with the score tied at 31, Carpenter rolls out of the pocket and hits aptly-named wide receiver Mike Jones for a 60-yard TD as time expires.

And the rest of the country is awestruck, bewildered, or just plain in shock.

I'm joking here, of course—but even the dim feasibility of this scenario argues for a long overdue playoff system in the FBS. At least then we wouldn't have to dispute who the real No. 1 team is.

Also, we’d finally have a reason to change that silly “Football Bowl Subdivision” title back to Division I-A.

Some Links

-I couldn’t find a great picture of this, but 600-pound Kansas head coach Mark Mangino sported a Velour jumpsuit in the Jayhawks latest win against Texas A&M at Kyle Field. Security officials were warned before the big mammoth descended upon the young Aggie faithful.

-Speaking of Mangino, the Wizard of Odds says that this coach and Jabba the Hut were separated at birth (along with other college football look-alikes).

-I hope he was joking, but former Florida Gators linebacker Channing Crowder said before the Dolphins' game against the Giants in London that he hadn't known people speak English in London.

-Charlie Weis Hate:

“In the entire history of American sports hype, has there ever been any fraud more grossly fraudulent than Notre Dame football coach Charlie Weis?”

Let’s just say people here and here don’t particularly like the way Weis is running the Notre Dame program.

-So that’s why Ohio State is No. 1 in the country: The school spends three times the amount of money on its student-athletes as it does on its students.

-Not everyone is praising Ohio State’s impressive play this season. This Iowa fan has sent an “open letter” to the remaining teams on Ohio State’s schedule (Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan) as a plea for one of them to upset the Buckeyes and eliminate them from national championship contention.

The fan isn’t just bitter because his team is 4-5 and he has to live in Iowa—he’s looking out for the conference, which may not be able to survive another thrashing in the BCS Championship game.

-Speaking of that thrashing, at least OSU finally beat Florida in something—the Buckeyes topped Florida as the biggest university in the US.

-Infamously bad former NFL quarterback (and current US Congressman) Heath Shuler took another hit to his rep when his Congressional flag football team faced the Capitol Police in a friendly game. The game wasn’t so friendly for Shuler—he threw two interceptions and his team was shut out.

-The Kentucky Wildcats' “Saturday in the Bluegrass” is a good song, but do the Wildcats still believe after losing to Florida and Mississippi State?

-Taking it back to the mid-90s, watch the former Nebraska godchild/quarterback “Touchdown” Tommy Frazier freestyle rap. Considering his flailing pro career, I can only imagine how bad he would’ve been as a pro rapper.